20.9.12

Pocket Panic Buster: Preloaded MP3 {Review}

I've always been quite open on my blog about my relationship with anxiety.
I have mixed feelings about my anxiety. It's part of me and I'm certainly not ashamed of it, but sometimes I feel it controls me far too much and that's not a good feeling.

I'm keen on learning about my anxiety and wanting to know what triggers it, what causes it, if there are any patterns to when it flares up. At the same time I'm also keen on learning how I can control it, how I can deal with it and how I can cope with it.

When Dawn, a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, asked for Bloggers to review the Pocket Panic Buster I thought I would be a perfect candidate to give it a good review.

Dawn has developed 'Therapy Beyond Geography', meaning she can reach out to those who are not local to her, and that we can benefit from her expertise.
The 'Therapy Beyond Geography' covers three areas:

1: 30 minute online sessions via Skype or Facetime, covering such issues as phobia, anxiety and life coaching.
2: Product downloads which can be listened to on the go.
3: Self-help YouTube videos.

The MP3 arrived the next day and I couldn't wait to review it, although I
wanted to wait until I felt I needed to use it rather than just using
it at any time.
I'd come home from a day out and was feeling tired, stressed and a bit upset about some comments a friend had made about my anxiety (making fun of it in front of strangers when I wasn't even having "a moment")
The boys were in bed, my husband popped to the supermarket, and I needed to relax.
I turned off the television, put my feet up on the sofa, kept the lounge light off so it was dark, switched on my MP3 player and followed all instructions.
I felt relaxed almost straight away. The instructions were easy to follow. I didn't feel at all intimidated by Dawns voice and oddly enough it felt like she was in the room with me.

The relaxation track helped me to calm down, settle and feel like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was able to picture the things Dawn was asking me too and had soon forgotten how stressed I was feeling just 5 minutes before.

Then we moved on to the Anxiety Management Track. The techniques used on here are fantastic. There is a breathing technique which at first I struggled with but after practise was able to do it and found it worked.
The other technique works using colours and associating fears/anxious feelings with a colour and happy feelings with a colour, then mixing the two together. Dawn explains it well in this blog post: Seeing Red.
At first I thought this wouldn't work. I couldn't see how colours were going to change the way I felt BUT it works. It really does.
I struggled with a colour for my anxiety first. In the end I settled on a red-brown-green mix, basically the colour you get when you leave your child playing with paints or playdoh and they combine the whole lot.

When the tracks had finished I found myself feeling so relaxed that I stayed on the sofa, in the dark for a further 10 minutes, until my husband got home. I was also thinking over everything I had just done and felt really happy that it was something I could carry on with and use in situations when I am likely to get anxious.

Of course, the next day I went out in the car just to pop to the Supermarket and forgot to take my MP3 player and ended up feeling anxious at a set of traffic lights. I tried the breathing technique but at that point didn't feel it was working (it would have been better if I had the MP3 with me) so instead I tried the colour technique and by the time the traffic lights turned from red to green I was feeling much better.

I honestly believe that this has helped me with my anxiety much more than the CBT therapy I have talked about before. I have got to the point where I was avoiding going out, because the CBT was making me think about what I was thinking about and therefore, minor panics turned into major panics.
Since first using the Pocket Panic Buster I've felt more at ease leaving the house, I'm not saying my anxiety has disappeared or that I don't feel nervous when I leave the house. BUT I know now that there are ways of easing the anxiety.
The Pocket Panic Buster is giving me a way to instantly cope with my feelings of panic.

The Pocket Panic Buster is a 4GB MP3Player Preloaded with the Pocket Panic Buster and Relaxation tracks, and is available to buy via the Think It, Change It Product Store.

With each MP3 player you get a set of headphones and a USB cable for
charging and loading other music onto the player. The MP3 player is only
a couple of inches big so it really will fit in your pocket!

Other tracks are also available to download onto the MP3 player.

I was sent a preloaded MP3 player for the purpose of this review. All words above are honest and my own.